One Type of Crux
by triffickie
Summary: Ron has a problem with their current sleeping arrangements. Harry doesn't. RonxHarry, slightly comical.


**one type of crux**  
harry potter, harry/ron, pg-13

for xylodemon, who requested the pairing in their new flat, prompt words: blankets, windows, moonlight.

featuring awkward!ron and beta'ed by sioniann. I failed to put one prompt word in. ('oo' separated sections of the fic since FFnet doesn't allow stars.)

oo

"Hermione's got a problem," Ron says into Harry's hair as they enter their new flat in central London.

This happens purely by accident, because Harry stops at the door suddenly and Ron's mouth bumps against Harry's hair and then Ron finds that he himself has got a bigger problem than whatever Hermione has. This isn't the first time Ron has been faced with the same problem, either.

"How so?" Harry asks and takes a few steps forward into the flat.

"Overprotective Muggle parents, plus I think she's got a new boyfriend," Ron says and thinks about how Hermione's problem affects his problem. There's something tremendously difficult about the way these problems build up on top of each other until the pile will collapse and everything will surely be fucked up beyond repair. Surely.

"A boyfriend we don't know about?" Harry frowns, not out of jealousy but out of worry. Ron admits, it's not like Hermione but he's not very bothered. In years he's learned that Hermione often knows better than he does, whatever the issue.

"Well, we'll manage," Harry says finally, shrugging.

Ron watches him walk to the kitchen, and hears him exclaim, "It's so spacious!". Ron almost snorts because he knows flats always look spacious without furniture.

oo

He's right.

Once they're all moved in, there's hardly room for anything extra.

Apparently, Ron's bed is extra. This makes him very cranky as it's a new bed he only just got and the nights he's slept in it at the Burrow have been very comfortable and really, couldn't they throw out Harry's bed instead?

"It's either the kitchen table or your bed, mate," Harry says, his hands on his hips as Ron looks sadly at his bed, halfway-through the front door. Suddenly his love for a good night's sleep battles his love for a nicely cooked dinner and the latter wins.

Hermione calls to their Muggle phone and talks about her boyfriend, whose name Ron forgets immediately, and she doesn't see anything, lack of Ron's bed included, as a problem but Ron knows better. He presses the phone closer to his ear and attempts to appear very involved in the conversation when he sees Harry carrying sheets and blankets from the linen cupboard to the bedroom.

oo

Ron sleeps two nights next to Harry without any problems whatsoever.

Unless you count the fact he's not actually sleeping a problem. Which Ron doesn't, because really, that problem is a speck in the universe compared to some of his other problems.

He talks about Hermione's boyfriend a lot, loudly at the breakfast table, because he's tired and he needs someone else's problems to discuss. Harry just gives him a weird look and then asks the dreaded question.

"Did you sleep well?"

"Absolutely," Ron lies smoothly and drops a piece of bacon in the marmalade. He fishes it out with his wand, accidentally turning the marmalade into jam, then orange soup and his bacon is forever lost. The ridiculous irony is that of course it's _now_ that he suddenly has magnificent skills in Transfiguration, when he doesn't even really need them.

"Are you okay?" Harry asks, but Ron is already on his way to the bathroom to wash his hands of the problem at ...hand.

Ron finds that there are a lot of other, pleasant problems one can fill their time with.

oo

He starts to sleep in the afternoons, designs a special 5-hour time slot that he fills with napping, so when he has to go to bed with Harry, he's not sleepy at all. Thus he can stay up all night, reading a book or just lying semi-awake until Harry wakes up. After that, Ron sleeps as late as he possibly can before he really has to go eat breakfast so he's not late for work.

This works, for a couple of weeks, until one day, Harry interrupts Ron's personal napping time slot by taking a nap on the bed during it.

Ron looks at the other half of the bed, not vacated by Harry, then walks to the sofa, but it's dirty and uncomfortable. So he doesn't nap that afternoon. He writes a letter home instead, asking, how can you charm a big bed into two small ones? Can it be done?

He isn't really looking forward to his mother's reply as he's certain it'll be filled with questions he doesn't want to answer.

oo

In the evening, Ron attempts to read a book ("Why I Hate Moonlight Matches – Confessions of a Werewolf Chaser", by Stephen Widdles) in bed until Harry falls asleep like he usually does, only he's tired and Harry isn't. Which just isn't fair, considering Ron is the one with the problem and Harry's the one who's perfectly fine with walking around their flat with nothing but a towel on.

Ron _really_ shouldn't have thought about that.

Harry's being talkative and tries to make conversation about the topic of the book, but Ron dismisses him and tries to follow the text he's been staring at for the last five minutes. He feels himself slowly drifting off to sleep and the book falls on his chest.

His eyes closed, he feels Harry remove the book, hears Harry saying how he really wants to read it and then his thoughts escape somewhere completely different. The last thing he hears is Harry, who is way too close but Ron is too asleep for his alarm bells to go off, Harry telling him goodnight, a calm whisper in his ears.

oo

When he wakes up, he is touching Harry. A lot.

Which is exactly what he feared would happen. This is the exact reason he opposed to sleeping in the same bed with Harry because everybody knows this is what happens, when two people sleep in the same bed together. They touch each other, a lot.

The only people who can avoid the accidental groping and the touching are married couples and he and Harry aren't one so Ron just _knew_ this would happen.

And now he's too paralyzed with shock to move. He studies the situation, hoping Harry would be deeply asleep and unaware and he wouldn't have to worry about Harry wakes up to wonder why Ron was molesting him while he was sleeping.

Ron has one arm thrown over Harry's waist, his palm lightly pressing against Harry's navel. This is really bad, because Harry's t-shirt's ridden up and Ron feels skin. The other really bad thing is that Ron's kind of nuzzling Harry's neck. And that he can't move. He figures he could, however, stop breathing so maybe when Harry'd wake up, he'd be more concerned about Ron being dead than Ron touching him a lot. On second thought, Ron doesn't want to die in an embarrassing situation. He's done too many foolishly brave things to die in a situation like this.

Then Harry makes a sound and Ron thinks that maybe it's his time to go, because really, with Voldemort dead, he's not very likely to do foolishly brave things anymore so this might as well be his time. Ron notices Harry's edging closer to him and this is really, really, really bad because, and yes, there it is, Harry's bum pressed against the place Ron really didn't want it to be pressed against.

Ron's suddenly thinking about something Hermione said, only without the tea-part, and Ron's certain she didn't mean this when she spoke the word "spoon". But that's what it is right now and Ron's really sure he might die.

Thinking positively, at least his cock is co-operating with his panicked state of mind, for a change.

Harry stirs slowly and Ron hears his yawn and soon realizes he can move his head, and so he does and moves back to stare at Harry's hair. Apparently Harry wakes up really fast, because in one long movement, he slides up to sit against the headboard and soon Ron finds that his arm is thrown over Harry's thighs and his nose is poking Harry's hip.

His eyes are open but he pretends he's asleep for a couple of ten very embarrassing seconds until he sits up and tries very hard not to meet Harry's eyes.

"Good morning," Harry says lazily, folding his arms over his chest and yawning once more.

"Morning," Ron mumbles and starts to move further to his side of the bed, as far away as he can, but then Harry leans over and kisses him.

It feels like a very natural thing, Harry's lips on his and Harry's hand on the back of his neck, pulling him closer. Harry is warm and Ron feels comfortable and dizzy and a bit tired all at the same time. Harry's really kissing him now, bunching up Ron's t-shirt and then settling his hands on Ron's hips, wanting to pull them closer to his own but not quite daring to just yet.

Then Ron yawns into the kiss, which he is really not supposed to do because he _likes_ it and it's most certainly not boring or anything and he would like to do it more but he just hasn't slept more than 6 hours a night for over two weeks now. Harry pulls away and Ron's face flushes, because who yawns during snogging? Ron has usually a lot of difficulty getting things right but this is just absurd.

"D'you wanna sleep some more?" Harry asks and then Ron is happy. Really happy. He nods and they lie down again next to each other.

Close to each other.

oo

Logically thinking, there probably ought to be some kind of an awkward talk about what Ron and Harry are now, what with the lack of Ron's bed and Ron's brand new lack of wanting it back. But the following afternoon, when they got up to make breakfast, there wasn't really anything awkward about anything. 

Things fell into place, as things sometimes do.

Ron tries to tell Hermione on the phone but his stammering explanation is interrupted by her light laughter and several "Honestly, Ron!"'s, as she goes on and on and says several things Ron never really wanted to hear from Hermione's mouth, such as "gay crush" and "walking around Harry with a mental hard-on".

He thanks her for understanding and puts the phone down, feeling red in the face.

"That Hermione?" Harry asks, leaning against a door frame.

"Yes," Ron replies. "She's ...cool."

Harry shrugs. "I figured she would be. She's not very uptight anymore, now that she's dating Draco."

"Yeah," Ron agrees.

He walks up to the kitchen sink, thinks about making himself tea now that everything's solved and he has no problems with best friends or beds, or sleeping cycles. Then he suddenly places down the cup he had just picked up and turns to Harry, his face even more red than previously.

"Did you just say Draco?"

There might be one problem left after all.


End file.
